1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of musical instruments and in particular to devices for playing percussion instruments such as xylophones, vibraphones, marimbas, cymbals and the like, which instruments have a surface and an accessible free edge.
2. Prior Art
In the past, novelty and variety of musical sounds have been created by an ever-increasing array of specialized and exotic musical devices as well as implements for playing those devices. In particular, percussion instruments and accessories of all varieties and in all size ranges have proliferated over the course of music history.
For high-level musical ensembles, it is expected that professional percussionists will exhibit virtuousity in both the traditional percussion instruments, such as drums and cymbals and the like, and in the performance of chromatic, melodic passages on instruments having full chromatic capabilities such as xylophones, marimbas, and the like.
Studio musicians in particular are required to exhibit sufficient versatility and accomplishment to play technically complex melodic passages, and music having melodic passages is frequently encountered in the professional's playing environment. Due to the demand for variety which is placed on the modern day percussionists, and due to the costs of production in the music industry, exotic and special effects are increasingly the responsibility of fewer and fewer individuals. The demand for novelty in recorded sound also requires a wide range of talents, especially from percussionists.
A variety of mechanical devices have heretofore been devised to assist percussionists in the performance of these tasks, including both new implements for playing the instruments, and new methods of holding or operating both the new and the old implements. In addition, new percussion instruments have been proposed as well.
A recent innovation in the performance of percussion passages is a technique which employs bows, of the type usually employed by string players, to produce a continuous sound from an instrument which is otherwise normally struck by a stick or mallet. The bow is brought into contact with the free edge of a percussion device, such as a xylophone bar or the edge of a cymbal, and is caused to pass along the edge of the device thereby causing it to be continuously sounded at its natural resonance frequencies. For those instruments which have a single resonance, such as the bars of xylophones, vibraphones, marimbas, and the like, the result is a continuous tone the magnitude of which is determined by the amount of pressure and the speed with which the bow is drawn across the edge of the bar.
For instruments having no distinct resonant frequency, such as cymbals and the like, bowing produces a unique and completely different sound comprised of the complex resonances of the instrument within the vicinity of the bowed edge. The effect thus obtained is not reproducible, however, by any other percussionist's implements regardless of how skilled the player may be.
Frequently in the performance of a musical score, percussionists are required to produce, rapidly in alternation, both bowed and struck sound effects, which effects require either two or more persons since such a rapid change of playing implements would render the passage technically impossible for a single player using conventional implements.